Sachs is the director of the Center for International
Development and professor of international trade at Harvard University. In 1990
Sachs was an economic advisor to the government of Poland when he revealed his
plans for "helping" the working class, writing ( in the January 13 The
Economist), "Western observers should not over-dramatize lay-offs and
bankruptcies. Poland, like the rest of Eastern Europe, now has too little
unemployment, not too much."

Sachs served as the chief economic advisor to Russia's
President Boris Yeltsin from 1991 to 1994, where he advocated "shock
therapy" to create market capitalism in Russia. Capitalism in Russia meant
mines and factories becoming the personal property of former high ranking
communists and other businessmen, while employees went unpaid and starvation
conditions emerged for the first time since World War II. An article in Harvard
Magazine 1996 reported that "Russians are dying at an unprecedented rate.
Between 1990 and 1994 the country's death rate increased by 40 percent, from
11.2 to 15.7 deaths per 1,000 people. Male life expectancy fell from 63.8 years
to 57.7 years, and female life expectancy from 74.3 to 71.3 years. According to
Elizabeth Brainerd, a graduate student in economics, 'Declines in life
expectancy of this magnitude in only four years are unparalleled in the
twentieth century among countries at peace and in the absence of major famines
or epidemics.'"